Day 1.
9:40 a.m.
All is calm. All is bright.
Have coffee. Brian Eno’s, “Ambient 1/Music for Airports” in my head. Lots of love and support from folks. It’s all been and is being received. Please know that.
Just, a lot of numbness.
I should explain myself.
…
Day 0.
6:18 p.m.
All was tenuous. All was dark.
My Mom had made a peaceful transition after having been disengaged from all life support.
I was numb.
…
Then…anger, sadness, rage, joy, laughter, tears. Memories and cycling thoughts, unpredictable emotions. Optimism and pessimism and the feeling like I might actually explode out of my skin…then the numbness.
Eno helps.
The nurse played Motown for Mom as they removed each piece of life support.
Josie. That’s her name. You know her, and if you don’t, you know someone like her. It might be you. She would never have forgiven any of us if we’d made a more selfish decision. Repeatedly threatened to haunt us if we kept her body on life support knowing that she would have no quality of life otherwise.
She was, if nothing else, ALIVE.
Mom transitioned with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and then “Dancin’ In the Streets.” It was fucking beautiful.
I had no idea what I was walking into.
We’d already “visited” her from our homes. Maura, from palliative care, organized and supported us. Her nurse, Jessi, brought us into the room with an iPad…Zoom for Final Farewells. We told her we loved her and we let her know that she could and should let go and be received by whomever she would be received.
The call ended. The world paused.
Then a social worker, Jocelyn, called me. Indicated that they could get me in.
To the hospital.
I never really processed what that meant. Didn’t think to ask. I assumed I would be with Jocelyn, Maura, perhaps a doctor and hospital administrator in a separate area.
I got dressed, and my wife drove me to the hospital. I walked in and…it was surreal. Cinematic. Specifically? Like a Kubrick film but without any of the overt menace. Still menace, though. So much menace. And quiet. Just…unsettling quiet.
The guard indicated where I should go, and I walked. Numb. Eventually (I don’t have specific memory here), I landed at a double door. Someone buzzed me in, and I entered the most intense of intensive care pods. A nurse approached, walked me to the end of a hall, room 16. There was so much equipment, so many screens, several thick clusters of seemingly dozens of tiny tubes. There was an office chair for me. I was with her, across a distance of 10 or so feet, a sealed door, and, I can’t impress strongly enough the amount of equipment…but still, with her.
I was her everything. She always said that and she always behaved as such, and thusly it was fitting that the universe conspired to place me right there. Right then. It was gentle and compassionate and peaceful and had I fair warning of PRECISELY what I would be given the privilege to witness and support? I’m certain I would have balked. I would have hidden. I would have avoided.
That’s not what the universe had in store for me, and I appreciate that most of all.
And you know what? That I walked through all of those fears, the existential dilemma of mortality that so often stops me in my tracks and crushes any ability to even think, let alone move? That’s all her. My Mom was the alpha, the one person who supported and encouraged and loved me…with all of my quirks and oddnesses and extraness and passion and anger. All of my crusades and endeavors. But also all of my anxieties and fears and trauma-reactions. I was only ever brave enough to take risks…because of her.
So it was absolutely fitting that she was the one who drew me to my greatest fear, THE…greatest human fear of all.
And it was beautiful. I’m telling you it was fucking beautiful.
(Takes a deep, deep inhalation. Holds. Exhales. Sips overproof whiskey.)
Now…you’ll recall I also mentioned anger. My Mom took risks and I was never quite able to impress upon her the seriousness of the world around us. I’m angry at her…but also I’m angry at all of us.
Each time a person needed to go into Mom’s room, they donned extensive personal protective equipment. I laughed at one point because one of the suits looked like a damn proton pack. Ghostbusters’ style. So there I am laugh-crying and internally performing the Bobby Brown rap from, “On Our Own.”
The universe delivered levity. The universe always delivers levity when levity is due.
Death is much less scary than I’d ever imagined it to be. I mean, everything that we imagine is never as whatever as we imagined…because it just is what it is. We exist in each moment. Death allows neither dillying nor dallying about the past or future. It beckons us back. To the moment.
The moment.
Hold in your heart these doctors and nurses, social workers and palliative care people, the technicians and docs and guards and every person who decides to walk back into the hospital to care for careless people.
Jesus.
I felt so much remorse and compassion. I felt suffocated…trying to express my appreciation for all of them. And then I couldn’t find my way out. The hospital was authentically Kubrickian in that sense.
Down the elevator to T2, follow the purple arrows (they weren’t actually purple and) across another tower and toward the, wait, is THAT where I should have turned? and fuck I just want, just NEED to get back to my spouse, in the parking lot, where is the parking lot?!
And still the quiet. Unavoidable quiet. Wait. No. With subtle minor-keyed Muzak Christmas dirges like exit music for the grief-stricken.
Stickers on the floor six feet apart from each other. Is that six feet? I don’t think it is.
(Oh. Did you know that the 6 foot thing is just a rule of thumb and it turns out 6 feet of distance is actually not nearly enough? Now you do. You can easily research it because I encourage nobody to take me, or anybody, necessarily, at their word.)
I walked…and the hallways stretched out. Time and space warped.
Please just, if you do nothing else in remembrance or honor of my Mom, perhaps your parent or spouse or friend, and all of the people who take care of the careless, stop spreading this goddam virus and STOP spreading misinformation about this virus because of how you feel or what you believe. It’s all the same. People are dying. And the 99 percent or 97 percent or whatever percent who don’t die? Heart damage. Lung damage. Blood damage. Immune system damage. Extensive rehabilitation. Lingering disabilities. Systemic damage about which we don’t even yet know. Long-term? We have no idea. Perhaps all of you who had it and had mild symptoms or were asymptomatic…perhaps there’s some fate waiting 5 years out. 10 years out. 10 months out. WE. DON’T. KNOW.
Care about humans. That’s all I’m asking. Care about humans.
Thanks for being.
Love yinz.
-G
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